First I'd like to apologize for the very bad grammar of the last post (and the others). I write with the flow, with ten sentences in my head and they come down mixed in a mess. I posted the last post without editing because that..section is a trigger for me and I felt sick. I also remembered the recruiting mission the leader gave us and I just felt like shit. I mean, I had it there, their scam, fully revealed and instead of recognizing it I bought it. I had all I needed to leave there and then and I got sucked for 18 months more. I'm so ashamed of myself. Sometime I wonder when these feelings will go away. The rage, the pain, how long will it last? I'm afraid it may last as long as their office and their people are here in London. Today the friend who invited me to landmark sent me a text. Just love-bombing (I told him before not to mention landmark ever again). I didn't reply.
I wanna finish this revision of the forum, maybe when it's all written down I can really feel free from the burden. If one person did not sign to landmark because of with I wrote let me know, I'll be happy to have helped someone. Now let's move on. I'll be lighter from now on, i need irony, and thankfully this next section is one of the most ridiculous.


"DAY THREE
"III. LANGUAGE AS AN ACCESS TO POWER
"Language is commonly thought of as a bridge to the world. Even the way we learn language implies that first there is a world. Then, in order to connect and deal with that world, we learn language. We seldom, if ever, consider that language may in fact be what brings that world into being.? In this session, we explore a new view of language that alters the very nature of what is possible. Language comes to be seen as a creative act. Listening and speaking – actions we would normally see as commonplace – take on new dimensions and unexpected power. They become instruments of creation."

COMMENTARY
Language for the lekkies is an instrument of creation. That's easy to explain. There are lots of examples of 'language as an instrument of creation', like:

[i:525e08cee6]Salagadoola
Mechicka boola
Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
Put 'em together and what have you got
Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo[/i:525e08cee6]

Just to quote one. That's more or less how it works for them. When you are a lekkie, reality is whatever you say it is. Litterally. You crete a possibility and it's true as soon as you say it out loud. Do you think they're just delusional? Let me remind you that:

[i:525e08cee6]It'll do magic believe it or not
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo![/i:525e08cee6]

Of course there is a less playful side. This Language thing is the brainwaishing feature known as "loaded language". One of the rules of landmark is to speak in their jargon. Please note that the jargon is constructed to support the 'technology', that means it is specifically aimed at impairing any form of expression aginst landmark. You cannot say "i think this is brainwaishing". You have to say "I perceive pressure". Then, the perception is not real (see other topics) and there you go, thank you for sharing, go back to your seat.

"DAY THREE
"IV. THE NATURE OF CHOICE
"The power to choose is uniquely human. We all have a high interest in shaping the course of our lives – making the right choices and pursuing what is important to us. One commonly held view regards choice as merely reacting to, or selecting among, the existing options. Here we take another view.
In this section, we explore choice as a profoundly human ability to create. When choice is understood and known in this way, what had previously seemed simply part of “the way things are” – inevitable or impervious to change – appears in a new light. We find ourselves able to choose – to have a say – about who we are and who we will be, as the author of our lives in any and all situations."

COMMENTARY
Yet "another view" at a obviously mistaken meaning of an english word. One may want a refund for their Oxford Dictionary of English. Or the Cambridge one, for that matter.
First let's try to translate what they say above. So, one "commonly held view" regards choice as a reaction (??????) or a selection among existing option (that's more clear). But hold your breath: in the forum, choice is a creation. When choice is understood that way, we really are able to make choices.
They explain the difference between 'decision' and 'choice' thus: decision is a selection of something BASED ON PREVIOUS DATA, OPINIONS, OR EXPERIENCES. Choice is not based on any such thing but on mere choice itself. If you select something because you want it, you like it, you think it's the best option, or any other reason whatsoever that can be counted as a reason, that is a decision. A choice is to choose because you choose. A random, irrational, unmotivated selection. For them that's the real power.
To me it sounds (now) as madness, and I'm all for a little bit of follow your heart, but that is pure 'don't question' attitude. Indeed, the only choices available are pro-landmark. It works like this: decision is weakness, choice is power. If you chose something against landmark, as in 'I'm not gonna sign up for next course', that's a decision, therefore you're weak. They will always prove it's a decision because they will always find your reason to disobey landmark. They will question you like the gestapo if they have to. Of course if you choose to pay them more, or bring them new people, or volunteer for them, that's a choice. Even if you have reasons to do that, that's really a choice, they won't ask question ("when the money keeps rolling in you don't ask how").
I can't speak for all the world, but here in England they don't stress on this 'distinction' much. It's not really repeated often. I guess it's because it's the weakest point of the technology: I've seen a lot of people shutting up the leader with a "i won't register BECAUSE I CHOOSE NOT TO. and i choose not because i choose not to". At that point they can't really say much back, except "i got it. Can i just ask you again in the future?". You just started an endless series of calls and requests, but on the short time it usually works. Now, lekkies, if you're reading this, tell me, why do you have to hold on nonsense to escape the pressure of the staff? why do you always say it's not a cult, when you have to look foolishly stubborn to get away with disobeying the leaders?

I'm really grateful for you all for this thread! Please keep it up! I left Landmark about 2 years ago having been through the whole "Curriculum for Living", a few seminars and most significantly the ILP. I left because I felt I was expected to be a registration machine - nothing else mattered, not what was going on in my life or the lives of my fellow Landmartians, and the staff and leaders were prepared to use whatever means to coach (bully) you into doing this.

The really strange thing for me now is realising, on reading posts such as Maurice's, how deep this brainwashing went and I am only now, slowly, recovering my self. I still have problems speaking out against Landmark as somewhere along the line I convinced myself that I got so much out of it, but when I really think about it, it's so difficult to put my finger on what that was. And this is from someone who was trained to lead introductions and did so for 18 months!

My advice to anyone who would consider this is to avoid like the plague. Maurice's posts give you a really clear idea of how they use language to twist your world around. For me, his observation about how it leaves you hating your life pre-Landmark and having a future that can only be fulfilling if Landmark provides the basis to fulfil it is particularly resonant. I spent the next 3 years attending Landmark courses and training to lead introductions to try and become the person I thought I should be. I'm now horrified at how I poured my time, energy and self esteem into something that is essentially a money making machine, and how I myself let myself use the bullying and intimidatory tactics that they call 'coaching' in the name of someone's 'transformation'.

"DAY THREE
"V. ACCESS TO BEING EXTRAORDINARY
"Each of us would like to be extraordinary: to have our lives matter, to excel in the areas that are important to us – our families, our work, our intimate relationships, our financial futures. Every day we are presented with the opportunity either to live a business-as-usual life, or to create something beyond who we’ve been and what we know.
In this session, we come to grips with what allows for real power, integrity, and courage in all the areas that are important to us. We explore the opportunity we have to express ourselves individually and fully, to set aside current standards, to question firmly held assumptions, to be at ease no matter what the circumstance, and to break and reinvent the mold"

COMMENTARY
This is the section of the seven commandments for being extraordinary. It's the final session, and it's the most scary. First we open with sharing the breakthroughs, and the first new-born drones step up to the stage to share their eternal loyalty to landmark. Then the leader shows his true colors of salesman, introducing the seven commandments for being extraordinary, or "the seven rules to become like Ghandi" (as he actually renamed it.no joke!). These rules are the only thing you can write down on paper. These are the rules, quoted from an article from the Observer:

"1-Be Racket-Free: give up being right - even when you know you were.
2-Be Powerful: be straight in your communication and take what you get.
3-Be Courageous: acknowledge your fear (not necessarily get rid of it) and then act.
4-Be Peaceful: give up the interpretation that there's something wrong.
5-Be Charismatic: give up trying to get somewhere. Be entirely fulfilled in the present moment.
6-Be Enrolling: share your new possibilities in such a way that others are touched, moved and inspired.
7-Be Unreasonable: in expectations of yourself and others beyond what you would think they are capable of"

Or, in other words:

1-be a lekkie: don't think
2-be a lekkie: lie
3-be a lekkie: obey landmark
4-be a lekkie: don't question landmark
5-be a lekkie: give up everything non-landmark
6-be a lekkie: recruit everyone you know
7-be a lekkie: don't mind the non-lekkies

Then you are pressured to invite people on tuesday night for about one hour. The Forum, the REAL FORUM, is on tuesday night. Do you think you got it? Wait! The real thing is on tuesday night. That's when you really really get it. That's when the forum is complete. The forum is all about tuesday night. Just you wait and see.
This is technically true. The forum IS all about the tuesday night. I'll explain that in that part. (I think you can guess anyway, can't you?)

The three day marathon ends with a really scary scene that i enjoyed at the time but it freaked me out when i saw it gain at the end of the advanced course. It's the thanks and credits part. The leader starts to thank, hem, 'acknowledge' the participants (the VICTIMS), the staff for their 'wonderful' (=UNPAID) work and then there is the 'leader's favorite' (i.e. that one guy that 'got it' day one and shared more than any other person, the perfect lekkie.) that request a huge round of applause for the leader himself. And you see all this people cheering and clapping and adoring the leader like a god on earth. It is scary. It really is.
And that's it for the three days. Welcome inside landmark. Yes, you can go to the toilet now. Yes, you can have some water now. But wait: the best is yet to come: it's the tuesday night. see you there...

Speaking of extraoordinary, I wonder whether you've seen this trick:

The 'advertising' tells you they'll teach you how to lead an 'extraordinary' life.

I saw a trainer confront someone who wanted to stand during a process where she was supposed to be sitting, and berate her loudly and publicly with 'who are you to stand when everyone else is sitting? do you think you're special? What the f* is so special about you?'

So if you want an extraordinary life you have to first 'accept' that you are not special (i.e. maybe unique) and be humiliated if you try to do anything out of the ordinary.

Another angle on enrolling - aside from the tuesday night 'graduation' for enrolling and all the other overt pressures to enroll, I think another factor is the isolation that comes from the commitment to maintain secrecy about the trainings. You can't talk to other people who've done the training because all you get is gobbledy-gook (at best, if you really question anything they get pretty abusive and tell you to 'get out of your head' and 'get off your position' or 'that's your sh*t" , and you can't speak to people who haven't because you'll put your 'integrity' at risk.

So the only way to get people who you really know and want to talk to about it is for them to do the training too - in the expectation that these people will not speak gobbledy-gook afterwards because you know them, they're not like that.... sigh.

The main thing I remember now about the basic training is that they get you to 'commit' to bringing people to the tuesday night RIGHT AFTER the most intense and disorienting of all the processes. Thanks for reminding me Maurice.

... I'd forgotten that too - everyone clapping and cheering for the trainer - but also for the assistants / volunteers. Sum total of payment for their work.

Isn't weird to forget so many things? Is that part of it do you think? How do you remember so much?

Hi Maurice,

At the higher levels did any religious ideas creep in?

On quest in the basics there is a lot of talk about 'your beliefs are f*cking up your life' and then a lot of attacks on religious and political beliefs. And they explicitly state that they are not a religious organisation.
But then it gets to 'you create your own reality' .... 'you chose your parents'... but how exactly did you choose your parents before you were born if not through some kind of reincarnation?
Or is it supposed to be a parallel universe kind of thing?

Quote
SaneAgain
Isn't weird to forget so many things? Is that part of it do you think? How do you remember so much?

I have read some years ago that forgetting is a natural defense of the mind when you suffer some trauma, i don't remember the details, so yes i think it is part of it, of the brainwashing. It helps them a lot: it protects them and it let them suck the people in more ("if you start to forget the forum go sign up for more courses").
How do i remember so much? I sit down, i copy the syllabus part and then i just try to explain what it says and try to remember what really happened in those three/four hours of the section I'm revisiting. Sometimes memories pop up in mind while I write, sometimes just after, when i re-read my post.
When i saw the france 3 video with the hidden cameras inside the forum it hit me like a truck. Scenes of abuse like that of the woman in the video, that i forgot about, resurfaced suddenly. And they didn't look like 'coaching' the second time.
Then came the nightmares. Most of the forum, it came back at night when i'm half asleep and still half awake (do yo know what i mean?), that's when most of the memories came back. I didn't sleep much those nights.

Quote

At the higher levels did any religious ideas creep in?

On quest in the basics there is a lot of talk about 'your beliefs are f*cking up your life' and then a lot of attacks on religious and political beliefs. And they explicitly state that they are not a religious organisation.

They always say it's not a religion and it doesn't have anything religious. Although i saw leaders denying the existence of any god under the heading of 'life is empty and meaningless and everything is made up'. I've heard things like "you can believe in anything that empowers you but life IS empty and meaningless anyway".
Usually in my courses people tended not to talk about religion or faith because we all knew (more or less consciously) that it would be treated like that. Obviously the tone changes if you talk about using parishes and temples and mosques for introductions to the forum, oh boy, yes, "the forum it's the best way to have a breakthrough with your faith".
I've seen a muslim girl complaining that landmark didn't fit perfectly with her religion. Of course she needed a breakthrough in spirituality, therefore she couldn't leave landmark. It's pretty humiliating, to be told with their big white smiles and their lovely manners things like "of course you can believe in Jesus, or Allah or Santa or Peter Pan if it empowers you, but don't forget that life is meaningless and you made it all up". It's sad when people have to put on 'maybe' their faith to be loyal to the landmark thruth, and most people tend to avoid that.

Personally i never ever talked about relationships and religion in landmark because i thought: "these are subjects i won't ever take coaching on and i know they won't like it if i refuse the coaching". I guess we all manage to save some small part of ourself that we don't hand to the lgats. Maybe those that are hopefully lost inside, those who got sucked in beyond the point of no return are those who handed everything to the lekkies.

:lol: :lol: :lol:

I missed this last time:

Quote

And he apologized to them like you would apologize to someone who says 'you're kicking my invisible dog'

The more I read the more I want to cry or break something, and I end up laughing. Thanks for posting all these reminders, they're really really helpful.

Do you have a link to that video in a format other than torrent? I've looked all over and can only get the torrent format, but can't find anything that will play that format.

And yes, I know exactly what you mean about that falling-asleep-nighmare-and-then-you-can't-sleep effect. Its like a startle-response caused by PTSD, only the thing that startles you is in your own mind, not in the outside world. Not fun.